|
|
New York State
GeoSpatial Summit 2006
by Adena
Schutzberg, Executive Editor
 No one
seemed to mind that there was very limited Internet access (one line!)
and virtually no cell phone service in North Creek, New York, home of
last week's New York State
GeoSpatial Summit. In fact, by the end of the day attendees noted
how nice it was to attend an event and leave "invigorated." My response
was simply, "And we didn't have to go to San Diego!" My reference was
to ESRI's annual event, which for many helps reinvigorate the passion
for geospatial technology and inspires another year of good work.
This event could not be more different than the one held for 12-13
thousand people at the San Diego Convention Center. The Summit was not
vendor focused. It was held on a single day in the middle of "nowhere."
It was oversold at 168 people. So what happened that left attendees
"jazzed"?
First, the main event set a tone of candor and good humor. The panel on
the "Future of GIS," which I was privileged to host, included senior
staff from Google, Microsoft, Pictometry, TeleAtlas, MapInfo and ESRI.
As many attendees pointed out, "you don't get all those guys in the
same room too often." That's true. And, you don't get to ask them
pointed questions that often, either. The questions ranged from the
future business models of geospatial companies, to how to get K-12
students ready for the new world that includes geospatial, to privacy
and security, to the importance of 3D. While I can't say anything
earth-shattering was shared by the panelists, I will say that the
perspectives of the panelists were most instructive. It was a valuable
lesson in "how some people who think a lot about geospatial look at the
world" and from those perspectives I think attendees took home as much
as if each participant predicted the future formally.
The afternoon was a mix of a
New York State specific presentation (on
New York State GIS Coordination Program) and four, what I'd call
"non-traditional for a GIS conference" presentations. Ian White of
Urban Mapping offered his "I'm not one of you" look at geodata, how
they are used and how they are presented, highlighting how his
company's datasets may be very different from those with which we are
familiar. Todd Fabozzi from the Capital District Regional Planning
Commission knocked our socks off with a perspective on the changing
economic and population patterns of upstate New York. I hadn't thought
about landscape that hard since grad school, nor had I heard the name
of David Harvey since then. What moved much of the audience, I think,
were several series of maps showing over and over again the decline of
the cities and, for better or worse, the growth of car-defined suburbs.
We groaned at the look of both, clearly hoping for better, even as we
contemplated our own chosen geography. (Or at I least I did. I also
kept thinking back to this great National Public Radio piece on cul-de-sacs
from a few days before.) ... Read
more
|
|
Advertisement
|
GIS in Biodynamic Viticulture: Happy
Vines Make Happy Wines
by Joe
Francica, Editor-in-Chief
Geospatial information and
technology has been used for several years
in precision farming applications. Jim Fetzer, a member of the Fetzer
family whose name emblazons the popular wines, wanted to apply the
technology to grow and manage an "eco-friendly" vineyard near Clear
Lake, California.
 |
Figure
1.
(Click for larger image)
Fetzer's Ceágo Vinegarden is a 270-acre complex where Fetzer is
evangelizing biodynamic viticulture using techniques that were proposed
in the 1920's by Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. In
concept, Steiner's theory proposes that the earth's climatological
elements are entwined with its plant life and animal inhabitants to
sustain each other as a dynamic, living organism. Fetzer hopes to
manage a vineyard's ecosystem to develop organically grown grapes of
higher quality by "tweaking" certain environmental assets (light, soil
moisture, temperature) in just the right proportions. How? Through
recycling, cultivation and composting. How does he monitor the
ecosystem? Via a bio-sensor network in his fields and a Google
Earth-based visualization system (See Figure 1).
Background
Fetzer is a second generation wine maker. He sold
the wine label in 1992 and now concentrates his efforts on building a
business model that leverages not only the quality of the Ceágo
wines but marketing the unique fundamentals of biodynamic viticulture.
In 2001, he hired Josh Metz, founder of Geovine, a small geospatial
technology firm. According to Metz, his job was "to blend new
information technologies and sustainable farming practices to improve
crop quality, operating efficiency, and environmental performance of
viticulture operations." ... Read
more |
|
Integrating the Geospatial Industry and
the Need for Open Standards: the View from Autodesk
by Chris
Bradshaw, Vice President, Infrastructure Solutions Division,
Autodesk
We are at a watershed today in
the geospatial industry.
On the one hand we are faced with high demand for infrastructure
projects, driven by the current state of U.S. infrastructure, which
garnered a "D" grade by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
in 2004, and by the rapid growth of emerging economies such as China
and India. On the other hand we grapple daily with a scarcity of
engineering and geospatial professionals, which will only become more
pronounced as many baby boomers reach retirement age.
These conflicting forces, an abundance of work and scarcity of staff,
are driving government institutions, engineering companies, utility
companies and others to adopt creative strategies to address the gap
between great demand and limited resources. Government institutions and
engineering firms are adopting productivity tools. Government agencies
with over-extended staffs are contracting with engineering firms, not
just for the design and construction work, but the operations and
management of entire infrastructure projects. Engineering and GIS firms
are contracting to their counterparts globally, as well as buying
smaller firms to access engineering talent. At the end of the day, as
functions share, collaborate and cross-pollinate, the civil engineering
and geospatial industries are rapidly converging.
At Autodesk we have seen customer after customer welcome, and even
drive, this integration. From the U.S. Air Force to the Las Vegas
Valley Water District and the City of Tacoma, we're seeing GIS
specialists adopt a more sophisticated approach that draws from design
information available through multiple CAD and GIS systems and uses a
centralized spatial database from a traditional database vendor like
Oracle. Unwilling to merely bolt these CAD and GIS systems together as
they've done in the past or suffer poor data translation, they
are
demanding a seamless and symbiotic integration of technology. They
still want the best tool for the job, but they expect that tool to work
with other technologies. ... Read
more |
|
Excerpts from
letters and comments
from the previous week (or so) will appear on Thursdays. Follow the
links provided to read the full comments. If you missed
an
article referenced below, it might be because you are not subscribed to
all our newsletters. You can change your preferences here.
We
welcome
your praise and
criticism via our comments tools provided along with articles on the
website, or via e-mail.
GeoRSS Fun
Adena Schutzberg's "Fun with GeoRSS," a
primer on the emerging standard, prompted a number of users to pipe
up. Some offered names and links to other software and feeds
available that support GeoRSS.
Carl Reed of OGC (to whom I consult) offers
some insight into the relationship between OGC and the GeoRSS
community. "Yes, there has been a very open and honest discussion about
copyright but that issue is being resolved."
O Canada!
"O Canada! Canadians and Open Source" by Kevin Flanders
which documented
Canadian participation in open source GIS brought a slew of discussion.
Chris Holmes of The Open Planning Project notes "that GeoServer
(http://geoserver.org) has also benefited significantly from Canada's
open source program."
Gary Meddick, Ministry of Natural Resources highlights the role of
forestry in pushing GIS in Canada.
Mike Sinclair, an Independent Consultant, raised his concerns about
GeoConnections, a Canadian agency that helps fund open source GIS,
among other GIS projects. "Unfortunately in Canada, funding for Open
Source projects (primarily through GeoConnections) springs from the
deep seeded socialistic, 'stick it to the man' philosophy of so many
within the Canadian federal government."
That prompted Russell McOrmond, FLORA Community Consulting, Ottawa,
Canada to raise issues of data copyright.
Allan Doyle of EOGEO points out Canada's support of standards:
"GeoConnections, as well as other departments, Environment Canada and
Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada were quite visionary in their use and
evangelism of standards."
We encourage readers with an interest in the topic to explore the 14
responses (far more than we can document here) to this article. |
|
Gentilly Neighborhood Mapping
compiled by Nora
Parker, Senior Managing Editor
Dartmouth college junior Ben Wilson, his
geography professor Xun Shi, and a group of students from Dillard
University, collaborated to create an interactive Web-based map that
details damage and recovery efforts in one New Orleans neighborhood.
The Gentilly
Neighborhood Mapping project maps data that were collected by
students at Dillard University (a historically black university), which
lies within the
Gentilly Neighborhood. It's a work in progress, and data are currently
being loaded. The example below is for an address, 4700 Mark Twain Dr.,
that has data.
According to the site:
This project will support the
immediate recovery of neighborhoods and thousands of families whose
houses were severely flood-damaged following Hurricane Katrina. It can
also provide a general neighborhood disaster recovery model for other
Gulf Coast residential areas that were severely damaged by Hurricane
Katrina, as well as a model for future disasters that create widespread
damage.
 |
 |
The Gentilly Neighborhood Mapping project focuses on a
specific neighborhood within New Orleans for which detailed damage data
is being collected. The above images show the location of a specific
address, and an image of the address. Used with permission.
|
|
Geographical
Information Systems in Archaeology edited by Shivanand Balram and Suzana Dragicevic
GIS is a rapidly developing archaeological method which is moving from
the domain of the computer specialist into that of the broader
archaeological community. This comprehensive manual on the use of GIS
in archaeology explores the concept of GIS and illustrates how it can
be adapted for practical use. Examining issues such as spatial
databases, data acquisition, spatial analysis, and techniques of
visualization, the book is an essential tool for both students and
professional archaeologists. From Cambridge University Press, 2006.
|
|
Collaborative
Geographic Information Systems by James Conolly and Mark Lake
Many advances in the integration of group spatial modeling, GIS, and
the Internet have occurred in recent years; however, there is a lack of
materials to highlight the transdisciplinary characteristics and
impacts of this convergence while providing a uniform and consistent
treatment of this expanding field of research. Collaborative Geographic
Information Systems identifies unifying concepts in the field, and
presents them in a single volume, providing a comprehensive treatment
of collaborative GIS that focus on system design, group spatial
planning and mapping, Internet and wireless applications, and more.
This book also details the theories, processes, and tools for designing
and implementing collaborative GIS, and explores collaborative GIS
methodologies currently being used or developed. From Idea Group
Publishing, 2006. |
|
Satellite
Monitoring Of Inland And Coastal Water Quality: Retrospection,
Introspection, Future Directions by Robert P. Bukata
GIS and GPS integration is happening in research and commercial
activities worldwide, however this is the first GIS-GPS integration
book to look at applications that combine GIS and GPS to provide one
solution. It begins by providing readers with technical overviews of
GPS and GIS and their integration, and then focuses on a selection of
R&D activities in applications ranging from intelligent transport
systems to real time location based tourist information systems. From
CRC Press, 2005.
|
|
|
Thanks for reading Directions
Magazine,
and be sure to tell a friend.
|
|
|
